Month: April 2020

Autonomous delivery startup Nuro has been granted a permit to begin driverless testing on California’s public roads, paving the way for the company to roll out commercial operations throughout the state.

Nuro, which raised $940 million from SoftBank Vision Fund last year, is allowed to put two of its low-speed electric R2 delivery vehicles on public roads in parts of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, according to the California Department of Motor Vehicles, the agency that regulates autonomous vehicle testing in the state.

The driverless permit allows the vehicles to operate at a maximum speed of 25 mph and only in fair weather conditions on streets with a speed limit of no more than 35 mph, the DMV said Tuesday. The permit covers nine cities, including Atherton, East Palo Alto, Los Altos Hills, Los Altos, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Sunnyvale and Woodside.

“The safety of the motoring public is the DMV’s top priority, and we do not give out these permits lightly,” DMV Director Steve Gordon said in statement. “Nuro has met the DMV’s requirements to receive this permit to test their driverless delivery vehicles on California’s public roads.”

Nuro won’t start its driverless testing right away due to stay-at-home orders issued by Gov. Gavin Newsom because of the spreading COVID-19 pandemic. The company will be actively engaging in logistical planning for the day public roads testing can begin, Nuro’s chief legal and policy officer David Estrada said in a blog post Tuesday. “Our hope is that residents of neighboring cities and counties will see R2 on the road soon,” he said.

A path to commercialization

While 65 companies have an active permit to test autonomous vehicles with a human safety driver, Waymo, and now Nuro, are the only companies allowed to operate driverless vehicles on California’s public roads.

Nuro might end up being the first company to actually use it. Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet, received the first permit in October 2018. However, the company has never conducted driverless testing on public roads there. Instead, Waymo has focused its efforts on Arizona, where it already operates a robotaxi service called Waymo One and it has a clearer commercial path.

In California, the commercial path is muddled for most AV developers. Under state law, the DMV regulates autonomous vehicle testing. If a company wants to transport passengers — essentially operating a ride-hailing service — it must get an Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service pilot permit from the California Public Utilities Commission.

The CPUC lets companies use their self-driving vehicles to transport people. However, they can’t charge for rides and the vehicles must have safety drivers behind the wheel.

Nuro’s R2 vehicle isn’t designed for people, only packages. While the company can’t charge a delivery fee, it can generate revenue by working with local retailers to launch a commercial delivery business using the autonomous vehicles.

Nuro will start with free deliveries to select customers in Mountain View and the surrounding area, Estrada said, adding that this will allow a formal delivery service in partnership with local brands and retailers.

The company already has its eyes on a statewide delivery service. Estrada said Nuro will apply for a full commercial deployment permit to bring its services to California residents throughout the state.

“Putting our driverless R2 delivery vehicles on the road will be an important first for our company and the self-driving industry. But it is just a glimmer of what is to come,” Estrada said. “We have always believed in the transformative power of autonomous vehicles, and in the climate of COVID-19 we understand their potential even more deeply.”

Nuro’s R2 unit

Nuro was founded in June 2016 by Google alums Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu. The company was issued an AV testing permit — with a human safety operator — in 2017. Initially, the company used modified Toyota Prius sedans for testing as well as for pilot grocery deliveries in Arizona and Texas.

The company transitioned in December 2018 to the R1, the first step towards a vehicle designed exclusively for packages.

The R2, which was designed and assembled in the U.S. in partnership with Michigan-based Roush Enterprises, was introduced in February 2020. Nuro received a driverless exemption from the federal government for its R2 vehicle, a milestone for the company. 

The exemption granted by the the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration allows the vehicle to operate without three features that are normally required: side-view mirrors, windshield and a rear-view camera that shuts off when driving forward. This exemption is different from the one that GM is currently pursuing for its self-driving unit Cruise. That vehicle, which is not considered a low-speed vehicle, has a much longer list of exemptions.

Source: Tech Crunch

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

“Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney. “Whether you’re in people ops, a founder or seeking a job in Silicon Valley, I would love to answer your questions in my next column.”

“Dear Sophie” columns are accessible for Extra Crunch subscribers; use promo code ALCORN to purchase a one or two-year subscription for 50% off.

Dear Sophie: I have an H-4 visa and work authorization. I currently have a job that’s considered nonessential during the coronavirus emergency. If I get laid off, I would need unemployment assistance while I look for another job.

Would getting unemployment benefits hurt my or my spouse’s green card petition under the new public charge rule?

— Nonessential in NorCal

Dear Nonessential:

Thanks for your timely question. The short answer is no, getting unemployment benefits alone right now won’t jeopardize your or your spouse’s green card. This is because receiving unemployment benefits, getting tested for coronavirus and seeking emergency medical treatment (even if it’s covered by Medicaid) are all exempt from consideration as government benefits under the new public charge rule.

Immigration officials have long had the authority to deny individuals a visa or green card if they are likely to be dependent on public benefits. The new public charge rule, which went into effect on February 24, expands the factors immigration officials will consider. An additional form seeking health and financial information must now be submitted with most visa and green card applications. Immigration officials will use that information to determine whether applicants are or are likely to become dependent on government benefits.

If you have received a public benefit in the past, your application won’t necessarily be denied, but given what’s at stake, it’s important to consult an experienced immigration attorney.

Individuals who will be subjected to the increased scrutiny of the expanded public charge rule are:

Source: Tech Crunch

Today, Facebook quietly released a new app for couples called Tuned. The new release is a multimedia messaging app designed to help significant others communicate.

The app is available for download in the U.S. and Canada, app analytics firm Sensor Tower tells us. Tuned was developed and released by Facebook’s New Product Experimentation (NPE) team. The division is — as the name suggests– very experimental and thus a bit quicker to pull the plug on projects if they don’t show traction.

The Tuned app arrives during a very interesting time for couples. Couples that live together are spending every waking moment in each other’s presence in the midst of quarantine and could probably never have less of a need for an app like this. For couples that don’t live together, there’s more of an appeal as people are emboldened to build out digital toolsets to stay close with their partners during an unprecedented time.

The app is by all means just a messaging app that’s more focused on pushing updates and stickers to a singular person. Users can also integrate the app with Spotify to share songs, or use dedicated widgets to share how they’re feeling or what they’re up to. The company refers to the app’s feed as “scrapbook-style.”

It’s not integrated with the company’s dating platform, Facebook Dating, in fact the most interesting quality of the app is the sheer lack of Facebook tie-ins. Some

For years, Messenger was the testing bed for Facebook’s social curiosities, but Messenger became too important and users weren’t responding positively to constantly seeing nominal changes in an app they frequently used. The issue is Facebook doesn’t have a default experimentation app anymore, and so these NPE team releases kind of force Facebook to get by with less user data and make judgment calls on how fast functionality can develop when starting from a standstill. It’s unclear successfully this strategy is progressing. NPE Team’s only other release that’s still available, a Pinterest competitor named Hobbi, was released two months ago and has only received one review on the App Store– a one-star review.

Source: Tech Crunch

A new COVID-19 vaccine candidate is entering Phase 1 clinical human testing today, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted an application from Inovio Pharmaceuticals under the regulator’s Investigational New Drug program. Inovio plans to inject its first volunteer test subject with the INO-4800 DNA vaccine candidate it has developed, following promising results from preclinical studies performed on animals that did indicate increased immune response.

The Inovio DNA vaccine candidate works by injecting a specifically engineered plasmid (a small, independent genetic structure) into a patient so that their cells can produce a desired, targeted antibody to fight off a specific infection. DNA vaccines, while available and approved for a variety of animal infections in veterinary medicine, have not yet been approved for human use.

That said, Inovio’s work isn’t starting from scratch: The company previously completed a Phase 1 study for a DNA vaccine candidate for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), where it showed promising results and a high level of antibodies produced in subjects that persisted for an extended period of time.

Inovio has been able to scale up quickly, developing and producing “thousands of doses” of INO-4800 in just a few short weeks in order to support its Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials. The company has done so in part thanks to backing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as funding from other non-profits and organizations. If clinical trials are succeeding, Inovio says that it will be able to have up to one million doses of the vaccine ready by end of year, for use both in additional trials and for potential emergency use pending authorization.

This is the second vaccine to undertake Phase 1 clinical testing on human subjects: Moderna began its trial in mid-March. Inovio’s trial will be made up of 40 volunteers, all health adults selected via screening conducted at either Philadelphia’s Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Center for Pharmaceutical Research in Kansas City. It’ll span the next several weeks, and the company expects data around the immune responses from test subjects as well as info pertaining to the safety of the treatment for humans, to be available by late this summer.

Any broad clearance or approval for use is still likely at least a year to 18 months away, but the pace with which human trials are beginning is already still exceptional, so hopefully we won’t have to wait too much longer than that.

Source: Tech Crunch

It has the simplest name but the sort of shadowy overtones that national security writers lust after.

Team Telecom, a mostly informal working committee of the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice (along with affiliated agencies) has for years been quietly tasked with evaluating and maintaining the security of America telecom infrastructure in concert with the FCC. Its primary objective as far as we have been able to ascertain is to monitor the ownership of key telecom assets to ensure they don’t fall into the hands of suspect nations (think China, Russia, etc).

Last year, Mark Harris over on Extra Crunch here took an in-depth look at the extreme delays companies can experience going through a Team Telecom review, which in the case of China Mobile’s expansion into the U.S., extended up to seven years before the Team rejected the Chinese bid for market entry.

That informal arrangement is disappearing, as the administration over the weekend published a new executive order formally instantiating Team Telecom as a legal process for reviewing applications for telecom licenses, deals, and other requests made to the FCC.

Under a newly-christened “Committee for the Assessment of Foreign Participation in the United States Telecommunications Services Sector” (CAFPUSTSS?), the Committee will be charged with assisting “the FCC in its public interest review of national security and law enforcement concerns that may be raised by foreign participation in the United States telecommunications services sector.”

Like its Team Telecom forerunner, the Committee will be made up of the heads of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security, with the Attorney General playing the role of chair. Applications to the Committee will be referred to the U.S. government’s highest-ranking intelligence officer, the Director of National Intelligence, for analysis.

Unlike in the past where the timeline for reviews was anything but standardized, the executive order provides for a 120-day adjudication process, with a 90-day extension if the Committee has additional concerns and goes through a secondary review.

In a brief press statement, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said, “I applaud the President for formalizing Team Telecom review and establishing a process that will allow the Executive Branch to provide its expert input to the FCC in a timely manner.” The FCC intends to finish its own rulemaking around Team Telecom, a process which was first proposed at the tail end of the Obama administration and has been on-going ever since.

These reforms to Team Telecom are in line with similar reforms made to CFIUS, the Committee for Foreign Investment in the United States, which were finalized at the beginning of this year after Congress passed a reform bill in 2018.

While the new rules will provide some certainty to areas of telecom like fiber optic cable expansion and wireless services, expect the new rules to be used to put even more restrictions of countries like China hoping to get a slice of the U.S. infrastructure market. Indeed, in the FCC’s statement today, the agency said “As we demonstrated last year in rejecting the China Mobile application, this FCC will not hesitate to act to protect our networks from foreign threats.”

Source: Tech Crunch

The COVID-19 outbreak has closed schools across most of the U.S., impacting more than 55 million students who are now learning at home. That’s created an increased demand for homeschool resources. Today, National Geographic is responding to that need with the launch of a new online hub, NatGeo@Home, which pulls together all of National Geographic’s family-friendly educational content into a one-stop shop for parents and teachers alike.

The free digital resource combines the educational content from the National Geographic Society with those from National Geographic Kids and other tools and services. This includes access to the National Geographic Society’s Learn at Home portal, where you’ll find educational content like articles, lessons, videos, other online activities and more.

The content on the site, aimed at K-12 students, is organized by grade and tagged as either “read,” “watch” or “play,” depending on whether it’s an article, video or activity. There are also lesson plans available, which parents and teachers can favorite to save to their library, if signed in.

The new site is also home to the Explorer Classroom, which offers live video talks from conservationists, scientists, filmmakers, explorers and other experts, that will air weekdays at 2 PM EDT. The talks will cover topics like wildlife, ocean conversation, photography, space exploration and more.

In addition to the educational resources, the portal offers families advice and information about how to navigate online learning and talking to kids about COVID-19. Some of its recent stories include a how-to on working from home with kids and a Coronavirus 101 explainer for parents who need help in better understanding the complicated health crisis themselves so they can answer questions from their children.

The portal will also be featured as part of #DisneyMagicMoments, Disney’s new family website that pulls together stories, videos and activities from across Disney’s properties, including Disney, Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel and National Geographic.

“Juggling your work life and your kid’s school life is hard enough. When those two worlds collide, as they have for so many families, it adds so many layers of challenges,” said Rachel Buchholz, editor in chief and vice president of National Geographic Kids, in a statement about the launch. “That’s why our goal here is to keep kids of all ages educated, entertained, and inspired, helping them become global stewards of the future,” she added.

Disney is not the only organization to have launched a set of homeschool resources in recent days. Children’s media nonprofit Common Sense just last week debuted Wide Open School, a comprehensive collection of resources for parents and teachers that included age-appropriate educational activities as well as daily schedules. National Geographic was one of the partners in that effort.

Apple, a Wide Open School partner, also launched the Apple Education Learning Series, a collection of videos designed to help schools and educators make the most of remote learning using Apple devices. And Comcast made nearly 2,000 hours of educational programming available to Xfinity subscribers, also in partnership with Common Sense.

In NatGeo’s case, its educational content was already being used by a number of educators across the U.S. to supplement classroom learning before the COVID-19 outbreak, so it makes sense for the organization to step up to fill the gaps in homeschool curricula, as well.

NatGeo@Home is currently available for free, though that could change at some point in the future when schools re-open.

Source: Tech Crunch

What’s it like to take a company with 3,000 employees distributed across 25 offices and make it fully remote with just a few weeks’ notice?

I hopped on a call with Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson to hear about how their transition has gone so far, and what he’s learned from the process.

Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson

Remote work isn’t brand-new for Twilio; as with a lot of software companies, many employees have worked remotely. But it’s still a massive shift: Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, Lawson says around 10% of the company worked remotely. Today, it’s everyone.

“For a company like us to go from partially virtual to fully virtual in a short period of time,” he says, “it’s not without its hiccups, but it has worked pretty well.”

Things are weird for everyone right now, so compassion is key

Shifting to remote work might make things feel different for a while — but those differences pale in comparison to the other changes people are coping with in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think the fact that you are distributed is lesser than the fact that you’re like, not allowed to go outside,” says Lawson. “You’re worried about friends and family and you’re reading the news… those things are more impactful.”

Source: Tech Crunch

What do a heating filter company, a robotics startup and an architecture startup have in common? Usually, nothing. But right now, as COVID-19 sweeps the world and jeopardizes the lives of millions, companies are shifting operations to make N95 masks and ventilators for healthcare workers.

The innovation coming out of the startup world has been breathtaking, and, quite honestly, hard to keep up with. It feels like everyone in Silicon Valley and beyond is rising to the challenge, even if they don’t have pockets as deep as Amazon and Google.

So, for a drop of good news and hope at least once a week, we’re rounding up some of the startup efforts we’re seeing to combat the impact of COVID-19. This isn’t a place where we’ll be analyzing startups working on proposed cures (you can check out Darrell’s tireless work for that). Instead, we’ll look at the unique ways that companies are trying to make us feel less lonely and unpack how tech is answering the questions we’re starting to ask ourselves.

Stopcovid.co

The founder of Managed by Q, Dan Teran, has teamed up with training services startup ESLWorks to text message the latest coronavirus updates to front-line workers in real time. The Stopcovid.co initiative targets workers who may not have the support of a big organization but still need to follow the health recommendations of the CDC. The messages are sent via WhatsApp and text message so users who are not digitally apt can access the information with ease. When I caught up with Teran, he said that, “I don’t want to characterize the population we’re trying to reach, but if I were a delivery driver for 12 to 14 hours a day trying to put food on the table, I’m probably not up to date on the virus and how it spreads.”

Cornell Tech Clinic

Cornell Tech Clinic is helping domestic violence survivors get support during a time when individuals are forced to stay inside and rely on virtual communities. The clinic launched a remote program to give advice to abuse survivors who are worried that their partners are using technology to abuse them, whether that is cyberstalking or monitoring every call or chat. The new program will include how to best get in touch with a case worker remotely, how-to guides for self help and a research study on how to aid those experiencing tech abuse.

S’More and Hopeline

Dating app S’More, which helps users connect beyond physical appearance, is teaming up with a mental health crisis prevention hotline Hopeline to raise money. The campaign, called “social distancing is not emotional distancing,” will make a $1 donation to Hopeline for every person who starts a conversation on S’More.

Procore construction management

Procore, a construction management software developer, is giving customers free access to its software for projects being built for COVID-19-related emergency relief products. The hope is to support the construction industry in flipping hotels, convention centers and more into emergency medical facilities, sans the extra money for software.

Wize tutoring platform

Wize, piggybacking off of a slew of edtech companies offering freebies, is making its tutoring platform for free until the end of the school year. Students who have felt the impact of their school or university shutting down can access a library of exam or test preparation materials.

Springboard career coaching

Edtech startup Springboard is offering a weekly career coaching seminar for free to help job seekers prepare for a “post-pandemic economy.” The AMA will be held every Wednesday, starting April 1 from 12:30 to 1:30pm PST.

Voxel51

Voxel51 is using live, pre-existing cameras to track how preventative measures are being followed around the world. It uses artificial intelligence to give a window into social activity in popular public spaces, and “scores” areas based on social behaviors. It’s a way to track how much people are listening to public health recommendations.

Tech Manitoba and Computers for Schools

When Tech Manitoba, a local nonprofit in Canada, had only eight refurbished computers for the 150 families in need, it knew it needed a bigger solution. Tech Manitoba teamed up with Computers for Schools and is now gifting 200 refurbished, sanitized computers to those in need.

One Planet prayer chain

One Planet, a venture firm, started a global prayer chain. The site, LightUpTheWorld.org, lets people from all over the world post prayers and reflections focused on health and optimism. When you go to the site, the prayer you see is being written and posted in real time by the author.

Stilt low-interest loan

Stilt is a tech startup that claims it gives low-interest loans to immigrants to help them build credit based on requirements beyond Social Security number and credit history. It is offering its customers who are hourly workers, and make less than $45,000 a year, an immediate freeze on interest for payments and a forbearance — which is a delay on foreclosure — for two months.

Source: Tech Crunch